


float up from dream

by smallish



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Gen, Microfic, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 08:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2685803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallish/pseuds/smallish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you shut your eyes, all you see are streetlights and numbers and flashes of distortion. Entry 75.</p>
            </blockquote>





	float up from dream

**Author's Note:**

> I can only write Jay from the second person, it seems.
> 
> Title shamelessly lifted from the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack.

_'It wasn't that long ago.'_

When you were just a kid, you would read all the time. Anything you could get your hands on. Your parents would catch you staying up far past your bed time, reading under the covers with a flashlight in hand, wanting to finish  _one chapter more_. You'd be scolded, but gently so, and they'd confiscate your book until morning.

You had damn good parents. You try to remember that. 

They made you play outside. You have fond memories of that, reluctant as you were at the time. A daddy longleg crawling over your open palm; you giggle at the tickling sensation. The smell of caterpillars. You caught one, once, and kept it in a jar. Watched it cocoon itself and become a butterfly. It died in there. It never saw the sky.

You can't sleep anymore. It's the caffeine in your blood, buzzing through your whole body and you think you've never been so exhausted in your life. Sometimes you catch yourself drifting but it always ends with a jolt of terror. It took Alex when he slept. Now part of him is gone. It can't happen to you too. 

There was a girl on your block that you used to play with. She liked you because you were the only boy she knew who would play dolls with her. You liked her because she was the only one to giggle in delight at the stories you'd have them act out.

You moved away to another town. You returned a couple of years later, just for the day, and she saw you. She recognized you immediately, but it took a long moment of studying her features for you to place her at all. You had to wonder what was wrong with you, that you'd place so little significance on her as to forget her face, when you had made a mark on her life. You offered her a smile, but you wondered if you saw hurt in her eyes. Even now, her name and face escapes you.

Jessica fades away too. Sometimes you can't remember her face or the sound of her voice. Sometimes, when you do sleep, you can't remember who it was you were looking for. Her name is a mantra now.  _Jessica. Jessica_. You watch the videos over and over, cling to her. She's not even a person anymore. She's a need. You apologize to her for that, when you remember. Is it better to save someone because they need saving or because  _you_  need to save them? The question loops around in your head.

In high school, you got a camera for Christmas. It was just a regular camera, but for the first time you saw the world through a viewfinder. You photographed everything. Feet in the hallway. A dead squirrel on the sidewalk. A pile of leaves. Never yourself. Those photos are distant now. Only vague traces come back to you. You wonder if they're packed away somewhere or if they were tossed away with the rest of the garbage.

You glimpsed it, in college. Friendships like in the movies—no strings attached. Having beers on weekends and laughing. You'd sit up late with Alex and Brian sometimes, and talk excitedly about Marble Hornets. It occurs to you now that it was really only them that said anything. You never had anything to say. You just held on like a leech. You realized later that Alex only chose you for the project because he needed another film student to help. It's not like you had anything else to do. You were convenient. Eager to please. How long has it been since those days? You try to count it out, but the numbers don't add up the way they should. You think you've forgotten something again, or maybe you just made up the difference.

Back in your childhood home, you stepped on a dead bee while barefoot. The stinger dug into your foot and you cried with pain until your father plucked it out and smeared baking soda over it. You were afraid to walk anywhere barefoot for a long time. You feel the phantom of it, sometimes, but it's in your skull this time. No getting to it. No remedies to chase it away. 

When you shut your eyes, all you see are streetlights and numbers and flashes of distortion. You wake with ears ringing and a tickle in your throat. Spider legs dancing across your skin. You try to remember your room back home. There was a window next to your bed and during the summer, you'd crack it open to feel a cool breeze at night. Cicadas singing. A closet that always had to be tightly shut before you went to bed. Everything else is forgotten. 

Your childhood memories are vague, meaningless jumbles. Flashes of places and people, but nothing solid. It falls away. You're rotting from the inside out. 

Tim is driving. You point the camera out the window and in the passenger side mirror, you see a pale sliver of a face. Trees pass, thin limbs reaching out and shadows falling over the car as a taunt.

Things are slipping away and it's happening so fast that you can't remember what they are. Can't even remember that something's missing at all.

 _'Well, I do remember that I was living in a crappy apartment, by myself, doing nothing. So I guess at least now I’m doing something.'_

Tim's voice comes to you, like sound under water. _'Just wish it wasn’t this.'_

Static buzzes in your brain. _'Yeah.'_


End file.
